“organic apples” vs. “apples sprayed with pesticide”

It’s a lit­tle thing. But a lit­tle thing that ticks me off in a big way.

You go into a gro­cery store. There’s a bin of fruit labeled ORGANIC APPLES — $2.49/lb.

Nearby is another bin, with fruits labeled CONVENTIONAL APPLES — $1.49/lb.

Maybe $2.49 for apples is steep for your bud­get, so you buy the $1.49 ones. It’s a free coun­try, so you’re free to choose.

It’s an ordi­nary sce­nario that’s played out a mil­lion times a day. But there’s some­thing deeply dis­turb­ing about this pic­ture. Is it just me? Why does it piss me off!!!?

Let’s imag­ine an alter­na­tive universe.

In our imag­i­nary uni­verse, you walk into the gro­cery store, and there are the same two bins of apples. But now they have two dif­fer­ent labels:

APPLES — $2.49/lb. and             

APPLES SPRAYED WITH PESTICIDES – WE’LL PAY YOU $1 FOR EVERY POUND YOU EAT!

Which apples would you buy? It’s a free coun­try – you can choose.

Large food com­pa­nies spend megabucks lob­by­ing the gov­ern­ment about what poi­sons can or can’t be used in food pro­duc­tion. And how foods are labeled. Why? As a pub­lic ser­vice to make sure peo­ple eat healthy foods?

I don’t think so.

And what’s so “con­ven­tional” about most pro­duce sold today? The seeds it grows from, the fer­til­iz­ers added to the soil, and the pes­ti­cides sprayed on it didn’t even exist 50 years ago.

We’re con­duct­ing an unprece­dented, rad­i­cal sci­en­tific exper­i­ment with food pro­duc­tion – and we’re the lab rats.

And what’s even more ter­ri­fy­ing is that we’re careen­ing — out of con­trol — down a one way street to dis­as­ter. Every day brings

• more habi­tat destruc­tion
• loss of top­soil
• loss of species diver­sity
• intro­duc­tion of arti­fi­cial genet­i­cally mod­i­fied organ­isms dis­plac­ing native species
• increased load of tox­ins in the envi­ron­ment
• ever-more con­cen­tra­tion of media own­er­ship and con­trol over pub­lic discourse

It’s still a free coun­try. Small con­sumer choices make a difference.

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Deepen Your Body of Knowledge

Are high yield, “conventionally-grown” foods as nutri­tious as organic foods?

Stunt your child’s intel­li­gence with pes­ti­cide expo­sure dur­ing pregnancy